The new laws would require that users would need to approve more than the standard 4,000 word contract if their personal information was to be used in ad targeting.  The EC  stated the following about the collection of personal data:

“If personal data is being passed on to a third party or used for targeted advertising then this should be made clear to the user when they sign up to the site and reinforced when users are invited to use an application.”

Facebook responded to the announcement by confirming the collection of data while assuring that the data stays anonymous.  The official Facebook statement given to The Telegraph:

“We can show relevant ads in a way that respects individual privacy because our system only provides advertisers with anonymous and aggregate information for the purpose of targeting ads.”

“We do not share people’s names with an advertiser without a person’s explicit consent and we never sell personal information to third parties.”

If Facebook does not conform to the new rules laid out by the EC, they could face legal action or a “massive fine.”  For more information see the full Telegraph article.

The grey icon is displayed next to a specific places results.  However, when clicked, the user is taken to the following Google+ only results page:

The surprising thing about the above listing is that the link goes directly to a personal account, not an actual Google+ page.  We had extreme difficulty replicating this on any other queries in different towns.

So are these personal Google+ citations in Places results a glitch,  or a sign of things to come? For more information see Blumenthals.com.

The only two weeks that  recorded higher traffic were the weeks that directly proceeded the public launch of Google+.  Last week’s traffic spike is likely due to the major page additions for brands, business and places that were released on Monday.  Expect these numbers to continue to rise with this week’s enhancements that further promote Google+.

Overall Google+’s October numbers trended upwards as well.  Total October traffic  increased by 3% vs September and the average time spent on Google+ saw an increase of 15%.  This is quite the turn around from previous reports showing downward trends.

Supporting information from the report showed that the share of returning visitors was yet another metric that saw gains.  The first two weeks of November saw an 18% increase of return visitors in comparison to the first two weeks of October.  Return visits had plummeted directly after the public release; this may be a positive sign that users are beginning to engage more on the social network.

For more information, please see the full Experian Hitwise report.

The selected companies are:

• Buddy Media
• Context Optional
• Hearsay Social
• HootSuite
• Involver
• Virtue

Hands down, the most common reason for using social media was “Staying in touch with current friends” as 91% of respondents agreed it was a ‘minor to major’ reason they embraced social media.  Following closely behind were the reasons “staying in touch with family”  and “connecting with old friends you’f lost touch with” with 87% agreement and 86% agreement respectively.

The lowest motivators were “finding dating or romantic partners” and “reading comments by celebrities, athletes, or politicians”.  Only 3% of respondents stated that dating was a ‘major reason’ they joined a social platform, and only 5% said following celebs was a major reason.

Some other interesting facts in the report show that middle aged users tend to see more value in using social media to connect with others around a hobby/interest and that users under the age of 50 see the most value in staying in touch with current friends.  To see more data, view the entire report from Pew Internet.

Google+ Posts

Whether or not you currently have a Google+ account, Google+ posts will be infiltrating search results for brands that have direct connect enabled.  Underneath the sitelinks, the two most recent Google+ posts will show up.  Here’s a look at a search for “WWE”:

With these additional results, WWE can effectively eat up more real estate in the results, a real benefit for reputation management.  For those brand who haven’t yet been approved for Direct Connect, their results will remain unchanged.  Here for example is a search for “UFC,” a similar brand that does not have Direct Connect enabled:

“Add To Circles” Button

If a searcher is logged into Google+, even more of the social network will appear.  Just above the most recent Google+ posts a large “Add To Circles” button will appear:

The “Add To Circles” button is interactive, allowing users to choose the exact circles right from the results page:

How Can You Get This?

We spoke to a Google Rep and confirmed that the above functionality will be rolling out for Direct Connect brands slowly.  Right now, only a select number of the Google+ Direct Connect Alphabet have this.  So simply prep your site for Direct Connect, then wait your turn.

This tab shows items favorited by those you follow along with new follows that are occurring. When this is rolled out to your account, expect to see a notification appear over the newly created tab.

For more information, see our original story.

What Exactly Is Direct Connect?

Last month, Google retired the “+” operator, most likely in anticipation of the Direct Connect release. Now Google+ Direct Connect leverages the “+” symbol for those looking to go directly to a Google+ page in search. Instead of typing in “YouTube  Google Plus” Direct connect will allow you to type “+youtube” to be escorted directly to the Google+ page, no results required.

Let’s looks at Direct Connect in action. When entering a query into search the Google+ page will show up as well as the icon:

Upon clicking on that link (or hitting enter when query is completed) users will be escorted directly to the Google+ page bypassing search results altogether. Once they land on the page, a special notification will show up asking visitors to circle the page:

Right now, only a few pages actually have Google+ Direct Connect including YouTube, Toyota and Google itself. While only a few have it, Google+ Direct Connect shows up in the administrative back-end of all pages. Right now, the most that can be done is to make your site elegible by taking the following steps:

Connect Your Website

In order to be eligible for Google+ Direct Connect, you must first connect your website. This involves going to your Google+ page, and going to the “connect your website” page that can be found under “Get Started” section:

Once in the connect your website section, you will need to choose a badge for your website. There are 6 badge sizes and a customizable name that can be added if you choose to do so:

Then toss the badge code into your page  and don’t forget the snippet for the head section! Once completed, you have automatically become eligible.

Tips On Becoming Added To Direct Connect

Right now, not every page is eligible for Direct Connect. Google says it will be adding pages algorithmically.  The official statement from Google is:

A page’s eligibility for Google+ Direct Connect is determined algorithmically, based on certain signals we use to help understand your page’s relevancy and popularity. In addition to this analysis, we look for a link between your Google+ page and your website. To help Google associate this content, be sure to connect your Google+ page and your website using the Google+ badge, or by adding a snippet of code to your site, in addition to adding your website link to your page.

Basically, make sure that you promote your page off of Google+ with links, drive users to add you to circles and post regularly on your Google+ page and you may have a better chance of accessing Google+ Direct Connect.

So sit back, update your Google+ page and soon enough Direct Connect should be rolled-out for you!

Postscript From Danny Sullivan: Direct Connect seems yet another clever bribe where Google is leveraging everything it can to win support for Google Plus.

In this case, why would any business want to push people to search with a + symbol to arrive on a page that Google effectively owns, rather than the company’s own website?

Answer? If you do a Direct Connect search, you’ll get only one result, an official page. If you don’t do that, then you end up with the classic “10 blue links” which might do things like suggest your competitor or a critic.

Consider the case of US presidential candidate Rick Santorum. Pushing people to find him for +Santorum neatly solves Santorum’s Google problem.

Google’s made changes over the years that help big brands see far less negative references to themselves in search results than in the past, mainly by allowing more than one page from a site to help “push” other content “down.” But that’s not foolproof, especially when negative news is happening.

Consider the searches for Toyota that were bringing up negative news stories during the safety recalls of last year. If Toyota is pushing that people to find them by searching for +Toyota, they would see none of that on Google.

Interestingly, Bing offered a similar solution that didn’t depend on having to take part in a social network. Bing’s “Best Match” results showed only one site when there was great confidence in the query. But Bing quietly dropped this feature since it launched, a sign that consumers didn’t like it.

Postscript 2: See our follow-up post, The Alphabet of Google+ Direct Connect.

Google+ YouTube Integration

Users have always been able to share YouTube videos on Google+, the functionality is now baked into the network.  Each Google+ user will see a small YouTube branded tab on the right hand side of their screen now when logged in.

Upon hovering over the tab, users will see a search box where they can input a query for YouTube.  This search box functions much like a Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” query as YouTube will auto-play the best result.  The results appear within a popup widow in a playlist format.   Here is a sample search for a band, LCD Soundsystem:

By clicking the green share button on the video, the video as well as the entire playlist is shared with selected circles.  Not only will your friends be able to view your playlist, but public playlists will be visible in Google+ searches. The playlist is generated directly from the search that was inputted, users cannot make changes to this. While this works for music, it isn’t great for other searches.  Here’s a look at a playlist that was shared when I searched for “Steve Jobs Stanford Speech:”

Clearly sharing 8+ copies of a speech isn’t great.  While the playlists work for sharing music, they seem out of place with everything else.

Another odd item is that the YouTube playlists open in a pop-up every time  while taking full control of your YouTube search tab.  If I open up a playlist from a friend, it will open in a new window and I won’t be able to input anything into the YouTube tab. Personally,  I would have liked to see true Google+ integration with the playlists, not just a popup.

Overall I was underwhelmed with this new feature.  The auto-playing of queries and shared playlists made me remember all that I hated about MySpace.   Even the functionality of the popups and playlists had me thinking that it might be more more effective to simply share a link.

Google+ Chrome Extension

The official Chrome extension may provide a needed bump for both Google+ and Google +1′s.

Google +1 Extension

One of the worst features of Google’s +1 implementation was that you had to hope something you liked had a +1 button on the page or perform a search to use.  This official button should now help spread +1 usage across the web.  The extension displays historical +1 numbers next to the button as well.  This is nice feature, as it allows users to see how popular a specific page has been.  It shouldn’t be long before this is no longer an extension  and instead worked into the core of  Chrome.

Google+ Notifications Extension

This extension allows users to keep up with Google+ activity no matter their location on the web.  The notifications feature mimics the Google+ functionality, square red button and all. This should be a great tool for avid Google+ users as visiting Google websites will no longer be  required for seeing Google+ activity.

All of these updates and enhancements are now live, so free free to download the extensions and play with the YouTube tab in your account to test for yourself!

Facebook Comments can be displayed in a few different formats, XFBML (Xtended FaceBook Markup Language) and HTML5.  While the report references that Google is crawling comments embedded in an iframe, that specific functionality is not supported for Facebook comments.  We performed some tests and can confirm that many of the comments are in fact showing up for articles.  Here’s a search for a comment on the Raven blog that uses an XFBML implementation of Facebook Comments:So look for Facebook Comments showing up in Google results.  If you would like to give your comments the best chance to rank, go with the XFBML implementation as that type is what has been shown to rank.

Postscript by Barry Schwartz: Matt Cutts of Google confirmed this behavior and added Google Can Now Execute AJAX & JavaScript For Indexing.